Dieting is not for sissies... or husbands

Diet.

Hmmmmm. It's that time of year, isn't it?

Well at least in my house it is. But then again - there are extenuating circumstances M'lud.

Firstly, the odds have changed drastically in our home. I am, to put it plainly, outnumbered. Up until recently our home has always enjoyed an even split. Two males and two females. Hence when the subject of dieting came up we two males (my son and I) could roll our eyebrows (now that's quite a feat - most people can roll their eyes, some even their tongues, but their eyebrows? That takes some doing), give each other a manly slap on the back and retire to the kitchen to wolf down a five tier peanut butter, cheese, bacon and Bovril sandwich.

We were men, and men don't diet. And no-one could suggest otherwise.

Actually if the truth be known, I simply hid in the shadow of my son. You see it’s a nature thing. Mothers do not make their sons diet. Of course they don't - the mothering instinct does not allow them to see their sons as anything but perfect specimens of humankind, which means they can eat all they want, indeed they may even over-eat (though when you consider Mrs Ed's cooking, you would realize this was not something my son did too often).

Hence when grocery shopping is done in preparation for any looming, glooming, dooming diet, if my son is around there will always be additional 'normal' food purchases included amongst the celery, shredded lettuce leaves, pomegranate seeds and plain,0%fat,0%taste yoghurt.

Like bread, and peanut butter, and cheese, and Bovril and bacon.

But alas my son is in Cape Town now, so it is Mother and Daughter versus Father. The dieters win.

Oh yes, I can already hear the men-folk mercilessly teasing and taunting me in their ridiculously butch voices.
“You wimp! You wussy” I hear them leer, “How can you let mere women treat you like that? You ARE a MAN aren't you?”

But if you remember, I mentioned extenuating circumstances?

Well the big one is this: Mrs Ed has (once again) given up smoking. But ‘properly’ this time. No electronic glowing cigarette replacements. No “I'll just cut down to two boxes a day, and wean myself off from there.” No patches, pills, chewing gums or cinnamon sticks. She has given up, good and proper. Cold Turkey, you might say.... (which again makes me think of a sandwich…. sigh).

So, as any of you who have ever lived with a WATGUS (Wife Attempting To Give Up Smoking) knows, YOU_JUST_DO_ WHAT_YOU_ARE_TOLD.

And when one's WATGUS suggests that a diet is necessary because, you *^#!!@ swine, she does not want to gain weight as a result of not smoking, you nod your head in that imperceptible way that certainly does not imply that she has, in any shape or form, put on even the lightest of ounces, but simply insinuates that you agree with her thoughts, purely because you love her so very much and you are really terrified of a repetition of the rather painful vegetable colander injury of last Monday.

So I was given one weekend to carbo-load* (*fill my body with sensible vitamin-enriched foodstuffs such as burger patties, crisps, chips, peanut butter-cheese-bacon-and-Bovril sandwiches and of course meat pies) and then the diet started.

On Sunday night I phoned my son in Desperation. (actually he's in Woodstock, just round the corner from Desperation.)
“Can't you come home until this madness ends?” I begged, but he selfishly told me I was on my own, and that, incidentally, he had to hang up because he feared his flatmate was about to steal the super-sized, double thick-crusted, three cheese, bacon-topped pizza that he'd left on the kitchen counter.
“Et tu Brute?' I whimpered. But he was already gone.

To make matters worse, this is one of the bad ones. Diets I mean. It's what they call 'chemically designed'. In other words I don't just cut back on the knobs of butter on my baked potatoes, or only have ONE handful of cheese on each fried egg, it's apparently an Exact Science. In other words, I have to follow the diet to the lettuce… er… letter, otherwise it won't work.

And each day provides a menu more disgusting than the last. In fact, 'disgusting' is the wrong word - that would suggest that there was some sort of taste involved.
“Tomorrow is boiled cabbage soup, celery and Greek custard!” Mrs Ed will declare, squinting at the printout some evil associate from the same coven has sent her. “And you also have to drink 27 litres of water.”

I close my eyes and try to work out whether that's any improvement on the lima bean and tofu salad, raw beetroot and cod-liver oil tea I've just consumed, but all I can see is a steak pie flying past on crumbed chicken wings….

And Mrs Ed knows, oh she knows, if I have broken the rules. You see one thing that happens almost instantly to a WATGUS is that her sense of smell returns. After years of not even being able to pick up that dinner is incinerating at 2000 degrees right under her nose, Mrs Ed can now recognise the scent of a trout swimming upriver. So when it comes to whiffing out the slightest hint of that tiny little bag of slaptjips I guzzled at lunchtime, it's as easy as pie (the one I ate the day before) for her. Such rule-breaking is punishable by death, or worse. Dinner.

So if you see me in a week or two, and I seem like a mere strip of my former self (either because I have just finished a bag of green suppository beans or Mrs Ed has caught me chewing on an illegal block of wood, ripped my arm off and beaten me into submission with the soggy end), please give me an encouraging word and a soft pat on the back…. And perhaps, if you happen to have one about your person, a five tier peanut butter, cheese, bacon and Bovril sandwich!
I'd be mad if you didn't!